Review: Sufflören
The stage’s whispering lifeline steps into the spotlight
The sufflor is the theatre worker who knows the play scripts better than everyone else and who, with infallible timing, whispers a stinging line when an actor comes off. At Lilla Teatern, the theatre whisperer gets a well-deserved place in the spotlight.
Swedish actor and screenwriter Anders T Olsson’s monologue Sufflören is often described as a tribute to the theatre’s silent workers. There are lighting and sound workers, costume designers and prop designers who are not visible themselves, even though the result of their work is central to the play. This category also includes the soufflers who do their best work on the evenings when they are not needed at all. At Lilla Teatern, it is a Joachim Wigelius in top form who with artistic skill portrays the stage’s hidden figure, the soufflé, who refuses all the spotlight and prefers not to say anything at all. “I’m soufflering, therefore I’m not,” declares the soufflé, who is always dressed in black, like Masha in Chekhov’s The Seagull.
The classic soufflé hatches have been relegated to history for occupational health reasons, but for the soufflé it is still important to be as invisible as possible when sneaking into your seat in front of the stage. There you sit with the audience at your back, on an ergonomically designed chair with a music stand for the play script and the market’s best mini lamp (the same one that soufflators on the big stages in Europe use) as a light source.
Light yellow and rustle-free
Who would have guessed that there was such a thing as snobbery? Of course, a professionally proud soufflé invests in his work tools: As a diligent page-turner, he shuns the usual rustling white manuscript sheets and has the manuscripts printed on specially ordered paper from England, in the shade lemon buttercup. He also sprinkles around dry spiritualities, cultivates a humour that is directed at the work of the soufflé, but perhaps above all at inflated actors and their laziness. The soufflér stands for security in the work, for a lifeline to grasp when words run out of boards. Who else will come to the rescue when the actor stumbles in Hamlet’s great monologue? It is in such moments that the soufflé shines and with unfailing timing comes to the rescue with a few theatrical whispered lines of text. The snob wouldn’t even call it a loud whisper, but to breathe with his voice.
Literature lovers
What drives our soufflé is his love for the performing arts and for literature. The poem surpasses reality and he enjoys spending time with the great directors and writers, and he likes to do so in a bound form. See one that becomes almost lyrical when Edmond Rostand’s prestigious classic Cyrano de Bergerac is performed on iambic pentameter instead of six-legged alexandrine. For Joachim Wigelius’ soufflé, the bottom is reached when a pompous actor – one of the many self-absorbed and condescending actors – blocks the lines. He loses concepts, is forced out of silence, throws professional pride overboard and demands his place in the spotlight. It is also here that Marina Meinander’s initially low-key direction shifts into high gear. Anders T Olsson wrote The Sufflören as a degree project when he studied at the Drama School in Stockholm, and perhaps the play can be seen as a declaration of love for the classic drama literature. The audience is treated to a stream of monologues in the monologue and a soufflé who souffles himself. It’s subtle as it suggests, but the text – with a built-in ideal of education? – I don’t manage to engage the entire playing time.